Any Other World
by itlookslikeIcan'tdeletethis
Summary: Cho Chang has been abandoned - torn away from her family, friends, lovers. What is left of this once cheerful, bright girl? Who is this new woman in her place? Oneshot, AU, I fail at writing summaries.


Nowadays, Cho Chang can be found staring out her window, watching the world change in front of her. No longer is she the happy, excitable girl we once knew. No longer is she sweet and caring. No longer does she feel happiness, or joy, or love. Her smiles, her laugher, are no longer real. Only real tears fall from her eyes.

Why? She has lost everybody she has ever loved.

Cho remembers. She remembers the day of the third and final task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Harry and Cedric would both be going into the maze.

She didn't know that only one would come back out alive.

She remembers seeing Harry come back, holding Cedric's body. She remembers hoping, praying that Cedric wasn't hurt too badly.

When Amos Diggory ran, sobbing, to where Cedric and Harry were, Cho felt a little scared. Then, hearing those words, "He's dead! My son...is dead. He's dead." She fell to the ground, disbelieving.  
_"He's dead."_

The words have haunted her ever since.

_"He's dead."_

Cho walked away from the window and towards the door. Opening it, she stepped outside into the warm sunlight.

It was moments like these when her thoughts lingered on more Cedric. The boy who always made her smile, who made her laugh, the boy who made her feel special. She couldn't help but wonder if maybe he is there, watching over her. She wonders if he would be disappointed to see her so empty, so deprived of life and joy.

Or would he be relieved to know that she had never truly moved on? Never forgotten that smile, those sparkling blue eyes?

Cho glanced up at the blue sky, and the shining sun. Cedric loved the sun, almost as much as he loved winter. He shared so many stories of him as a child having snowball fights with his father, building snowmen, and then going back inside their house for some delicious hot chocolate.

Cho's mind wandered to Harry. Poor Harry, who had died to save everyone he had loved.

She had known since...forever that he had liked her. She had smiled, back then, when he stuttered over every word, trying to talk to her.

_"Wangoballwithme?" _

When she was sixteen and he was fifteen, she wanted answers. She hadn't wanted to believe Harry's story about Cedric's death to be a lie, but then—what would explain Cedric's death? He had died a hero's death, but it was something that she had dreaded and couldn't believe. She hadn't wanted to believe he was gone. She hadn't wanted to believe that Cedric had been killed by Voldemort. That Voldemort was truly back.

Now she knew how immature she had been, using Harry to know more about Cedric's death.

**Death.**

It was a word that she had been associated with very often. Too often.

A month or so into the summer vacation in between her sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts, Death Eaters had attacked her house.

She, her mother, father, and two brothers had fought till they could fight no longer. Cho's mother and one brother were killed and her father and other brother were both injured greatly. Cho had a gash across her stomach and many, many cuts and bruises. She had a cut on the back of her head as well. The Death Eaters had left triumphantly, conjuring the Dark Mark above her house, believing all inside to be dead.

This was after Cedric had died, leaving her with nobody to love at all.

She had turned to Harry for shoulder to cry on, for a soul to talk to. She had wanted to know about Cedric's death. She had been truly angry when he wouldn't talk about Cedric. She had guilt-tripped him; used every little thing to make him feel horrible.

She felt like scum now as she thought about it. About how she had acted. How she had treated the poor boy who had only wanted to be her everything.

She had acted like it bothered her to see him with Ginny. It didn't. Ginny was a sweet girl; she and Harry deserved to be together. Just like Cho and Cedric deserved to be together.

She had been there when Harry died. It was the end of the Second War; the end of the Final Battle. Everybody knew that somebody had to die; Harry or Voldemort. But they didn't know it could be both.

There was chaos everywhere, Cho remembered. Wand sparks flying everywhere; the Death Eaters not caring who or what they hit, as long as they killed more than the Death Eater next to them. The whole Order, plus old Hogwarts members who weren't officially in the Order was there, fighting to their deaths. Cho was one of the Order then; she was called to the battle by Minerva McGonagall, who had taken over the Order after Dumbledore's death. The new Minister of Magic, Arthur Weasley, was there, his wife, Molly, next to him. Cho watched as Molly was killed by Bellatrix Lestrange, who could claim the death of so many good people. Cho knew; she had watched the whole battle.

In the end, Cho had wound up fighting the Lestranges, Bellatrix and Rudolphus, at the same time. It was a miracle that she had survived. Rudolphus had been taken out by a jet of green light sent by a fellow Death Eater, pushed off course by Luna Lovegood's quick spellwork. It was then that Bellatrix seemed to lose some of her inhumane thirst for death, making her seem more human than usual. The wild look in her eyes had faded, replaced with true grief.

She had said something, Cho recalled. Cho had almost wanted to let her grieve; to let her mourn her fallen husband. But then Bellatrix had straightened, and her eyes seemed dead, void of anything at all. She had straightened, and tried to kill Cho. But Cho was, too, quick, and sent a Stunning Hex straight towards the beam of green light heading speedily her way. The two spells had collided and exploded in a shower of green and red sparks. Cho had almost regretfully sent another Stunning Hex towards Bellatrix in an attempt to control her. She had never been extremely fond of fighting battles. She had preferred to stay at 12 Grimmauld Place, recruiting members, or even doing paperwork. The hex had proved useful, it hit Bellatrix in a stroke of luck and she was out. Cho had shakily bound her with ropes and made sure that there was no way for her to escape by taking her wand away.

Then it seemed like everything and everyone just froze in place. Harry and Voldemort stood in the middle of the raging battle, their fates undecided. Cho thought she knew what would happen – she had asked Harry about the graveyard scene countless times – the beams of light from the two wands would form a magical web and out would come all the spells that were last performed.

But this time, there was something different. Both men lifted their wands in unison; both shouted 'Avada Kedavra' at the exact same moment. But instead of the beams colliding with each other and stopping... they rebounded off each other and stuck the caster in the dead center of their chest.

"What are you thinking about?"  
Cho blinked, she'd been staring into the fire blankly. She looked around at the boy next to her who, by chance, looked just like her long lost lover, confidant, and best friend...  
"A boy I used to know, named Cedric Diggory..."  
The young boy, not catching the fact that he had the same as this mysterious character, wasn't sure why his mother was acting like this all of a sudden, "What happened to him?"  
Cho glanced up at a photograph that was mounted over every door to the kitchen of the house. Little Cedric had wondered about it, but never had he spoken of it. Each one had the same inscription underneath, he'd noticed.

It read "_To die would be an awfully big adventure._"  
Cho was staring back into the fire again, she'd opened a really old dusty box that suddenly filled the room with a strange melody, "Mom?"  
"Mhmm?"  
"What happened to him?"  
She half smiled at her adopted son, and then looked into the fire,  
"...He died."


End file.
